The overall objective of the study is to further the examination of drug use in a cultural context among the members of two white ethnic sub-cultures in New York City - working and lower class Irish-American and Italian-American. Members of these sub-cultures constitute the great majority of white drug users in New York City, and they have not been studied within the context of their specific cultural heritages and environmental backgrounds. A methodological objective is to adapt ethnographic methods and techniques to the study of urban drug addiction, following in the tradition of earlier work by Preble and Casey and Feldman.